Nightmares
by misskes
Summary: A recurring nightmare of Vegeta's. One shot for DA contest. The theme was blood.


The nightmares started when I was fourteen. They would always begin the same, on some cold, distant planet. The sky would be grey and there would be dark clouds in the sky but never a breeze. It was always the calm before the storm. And the bodies, hundreds and hundreds of bodies, with their eyes wide open, staring at me. When the nightmares first began I would try to attack them, blast after blast after blast, but nothing would close those eyes. Every step I took on the hard, cold dirt was followed by eyes. And when the blood started to trickle down from the mounds of bodies I would already be running. Running towards something, running from something, it never mattered. The blood would always catch me, swallowing me in a thick river. The harder I fought to reach the surface the faster the current swarmed around me, the blood pulling me down, down, down to the waiting bodies below, their eyes watching me struggle

Nappa said it was stress. He had no idea what the dreams were about, only that I started waking every night, coated in a fresh layer of sweat, the remainder of my boyish bangs glued to my forehead. I'm sure he thought my nightmares were about Frieza. Hmph. I spent enough of my days being stressed about the tyrant, it was a small mercy that my dreams didn't feature him as well.

Some nights I would awaken screaming, the sweat mistaken for blood, and I would claw at my arms and face, trying to cleanse myself of it. After a few weeks of that I began wearing my gloves to sleep. My two subjects assumed it was to prevent further injury to myself, but really I didn't want to see the blood on my hands. The blood that always came out of the nightmares with me; the blood that only I could see. By the time I was fifteen I never took the gloves off. I was also convinced that I was slowly going insane.

By that time my nightmare would play on a loop. Whereas I would wake up whilst drowning I now would just start the dream all over again. I would greet the mornings relieved and exhausted.

The bodies slowly began to become people I knew. The first person was Nappa, neck snapped, the veins in his head bulging and his eyes on mine. Sometimes I would only catch glimpses of a familiar face out of the corner of my eye. My father, lying amongst the bodies, but gone when I turned my head to look again.

Then, as suddenly as they had come, the nightmares stopped. I was relieved, to say the least, but the psychological damage had been more than done. My gloves came off when I bathed, then were promptly replaced after. I never second guessed my killings, if anything I became more ruthless, sometimes torturing my victims to death, willing my mind to imprint _these _faces, _these_ places in my mind, not the ones from my nightmares.

My comrades began to fear me. I could see it in their eyes. The respect they once held for me because of my rank slowly had begun to twist into something else. Their growing trepidation at my behavior only served to reinforce what I already knew in my mind-I really was as crazy as I felt. Neither one ever spoke out against me. I was their Prince, of royal blood. Everything in my life always came back to blood.

For years after that I never had another nightmare. Not after murdering my mentor, Nappa, his bloodied hand reaching out to me for mercy. Not after the death of the monster who had kidnapped me as a child and effectively ruined my life. Not after my own death or during my insane quest to become a Super Saiyan,

The night that my son was born I lay on the grass outside the compound, staring at the sky. I could feel the exhaustion in my eyelids. The day's events had surely been tiring. The birth had been difficult for the woman and damn her if I hadn't been concerned for her well-being and the child's. I felt my eyes droop and almost instantly the sky around me became grey, the soft grass beneath my body turning to dirt and the eyes, hundreds and hundreds of eyes, staring at me, watching my every move.

I heard crying in the distance, a baby's wails, and I felt my pulse being to quicken as my legs moved towards the sound. I was screaming in my mind, screaming and screaming, but the only sound in the dream was the wailing of the child. I wanted to run, to be anywhere but there. I didn't want to see what I knew would be around that corner. The blood began to form in small rivulets around me, following my footsteps as I walked closer and closer to the sound. When I rounded the mound of bodies the crying stopped and one single body lay motionless on the ground, her back facing me, blue hair spilling out across the cold earth.

The screaming in my mind grew louder and as the blood circled around my ankles her head began to move, twisting until it alone faced me, her blue eyes wide open, staring into me. Her lips parted, blood trickling out as she moved her mouth to speak, but the only sound that came was gurgling as she choked on the blood. Then suddenly the wailing began again, but it was coming from all around me, and as I watched all the bodies became the woman's, staring at me as I stood in a puddle of blood, my boots beginning to sink into the ground. I looked back at the woman on the ground before me, lips still moving, trying to speak while her lifeless eyes stared straight ahead. And then the crying was coming from right beside me and I looked down to see my infant son, his neck broken and his eyes open wide, staring up at me while his tiny mouth set in a perfect "o", the wailing growing louder and louder.

I woke screaming, my throat already hoarse. Sweat covered my body, the salty wetness mixing with the tears already staining my face. I was so lost in my agony I didn't even hear the woman's frantic approach but when she wrapped her arms around my shoulders I allowed myself to be pulled into her embrace. We stayed like that for several minutes, my quiet sobs the only sound in the dead night air. Finally I pulled back from her, embarrassed by my display of emotion and my eyes caught the trail of tears down he own cheeks. I stared intently into her face, my finger tracing the residuous line.

She blushed and laughed nervously, "i heard you screaming and..." she shook her head, her eyes averting my gaze.

"I was worried," she finished softly.

I don't know what I felt at that moment, only that I had never felt it before. Maybe it was the birth of my son, or the nightmare, or the fact that this was the first time that I admitted to myself that truly cared for her, but all I could think of was how beautiful she looked under the stars, her blue eyes shining brighter than ever, and no matter how badly I hurt I never wanted to see her cheeks stained with tears because of me again.

I didn't have the words to say what I wanted in that moment, I didn't know them yet, so instead I looked at her and said, "Thank you," my voice still gravelly from screaming. She nodded, once, her face solemn and beautiful, and she knew the weight that those two words carried. As I light breeze passed by us I lay back down, pulling her into my arms, and we gazed at the sky until the stars faded into the sunrise.


End file.
